As a child, Rodham was a favorite student among her teachers at the public schools that she attended in Park Ridge.[14] She participated in swimming and softball and earned numerous badges as a Brownie and a Girl Scout.[14] She has often told a story[15][16][17] of being inspired by U.S. efforts during the Space Race and sending a letter to NASA around 1961 asking what she could do to become an astronaut, only to be informed that women were not being accepted into the program.[18] She attended Maine East High School, where she participated in the student council, the school newspaper and was selected for the National Honor Society.[5][19] She was elected class vice president for her junior year, but then lost the election for class president for her senior year against two boys, one of whom told her that "you are really stupid if you think a girl can be elected president".[20] For her senior year, she and other students were transferred to the then new Maine South High School, where she was a National Merit Finalist and was voted, "most likely to succeed". She graduated in 1965 in the top five percent of her class.[21]

By her junior year, Rodham became a supporter of the antiwar presidential nomination campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy.[35] In early 1968, she was elected president of the Wellesley College Government Association and served through early 1969.[33][36] Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Rodham organized a two-day student strike and worked with Wellesley's black students to recruit more black students and faculty.[35] In her student government role, she played a role in keeping Wellesley from being embroiled in the student disruptions common to other colleges.[33][37] A number of her fellow students thought she might some day become the first female President of the United States.[33]

In 1969, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts,[39] with departmental honors in political science.[38] After some fellow seniors requested that the college administration allow a student speaker at commencement, she became the first student in Wellesley College history to speak at the event. Her address followed that of commencement speaker Senator Edward Brooke.[36][40] After her speech, she received a standing ovation that lasted seven minutes.[33][41][42] She was featured in an article published in Life magazine,[43][44] due to the response to a part of her speech that criticized Senator Brooke.[40] She also appeared on Irv Kupcinet's nationally syndicated television talk show as well as in Illinois and New England newspapers.[45] That summer, she worked her way across Alaska, washing dishes in Mount McKinley National Park and sliming salmon in a fish processing cannery in Valdez (which fired her and shut down overnight when she complained about unhealthful conditions).[46]

Rodham began a year of postgraduate study on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center.[61] In late 1973 her first scholarly article, "Children Under the Law", was published in the Harvard Educational Review.[62] Discussing the new children's rights movement, the article stated that "child citizens" were "powerless individuals"[63] and argued that children should not be considered equally incompetent from birth to attaining legal age, but instead that courts should presume competence except when there is evidence otherwise, on a case-by-case basis.[64] The article became frequently cited in the field.[65]

By then, Rodham was viewed as someone with a bright political future. Democratic political organizer and consultant Betsey Wright had moved from Texas to Washington the previous year to help guide Rodham's career.[69] Wright thought she had the potential to become a future senator or president.[70] Meanwhile, boyfriend Bill Clinton had repeatedly asked Rodham to marry him, but she continued to demur.[71] After failing the District of Columbiabar exam[72] and passing the Arkansas exam, Rodham came to a key decision. As she later wrote, "I chose to follow my heart instead of my head".[73] She thus followed Clinton to Arkansas, rather than staying in Washington, where career prospects were brighter. He was then teaching law and running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in his home state. In August 1974, Rodham moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas and became one of only two female faculty members in the School of Law at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.[74][75]

Early Arkansas years

At the university, Rodham taught classes in criminal law, where she was considered to be a rigorous teacher who was tough with her grades.[76] She became the first director of a new legal aid clinic at the school, where she secured support from the local bar association and gained federal funding.[77] In one of her cases, the court required her to serve as defense counsel to a man accused of raping a 12-year-old girl; after her request to be relieved of the assignment failed, Clinton used an effective defense and directed her client to plead guilty to a much lesser charge. Decades later, the victim said that the defense counsel had put her "through hell" during the legal process; Hillary Clinton has called the trial a "terrible case".[78] During her time in Fayetteville, Rodham and several other women founded the city's first rape crisis center.[77] Rodham still harbored doubts about getting married; she was concerned that her separate identity would be lost and that her accomplishments would be viewed in light of someone else.[79]

In 1974, Bill Clinton lost a congressional race.[80] Rodham and Bill Clinton bought a house in Fayetteville in the summer of 1975 and she finally agreed to marry him.[81] The wedding took place on October 11, 1975, in a Methodist ceremony in their living room.[82] A story about the marriage in the Arkansas Gazette indicated that she decided to retain the name Hillary Rodham.[82][83] Her motivation was threefold. She wanted to keep the couple's professional lives separate, avoid apparent conflicts of interest, and as she told a friend at the time, "it showed that I was still me."[84] The decision upset both mothers, who were more traditional.[85]

Rodham maintained her interest in children's law and family policy, publishing the scholarly articles "Children's Policies: Abandonment and Neglect" in 1977[91] and "Children's Rights: A Legal Perspective" in 1979.[92] The latter continued her argument that children's legal competence depended upon their age and other circumstances and that in serious medical rights cases, judicial intervention was sometimes warranted. An American Bar Association chair later said, "Her articles were important, not because they were radically new but because they helped formulate something that had been inchoate."[64] Historian Garry Wills would later describe her as "one of the more important scholar-activists of the last two decades",[93] while conservatives said her theories would usurp traditional parental authority,[94] would allow children to file frivolous lawsuits against their parents,[64] and exemplified critical legal studies run amok.[95]

In 1977, Rodham cofounded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a state-level alliance with the Children's Defense Fund.[47][97] Later that year, President Jimmy Carter (for whom Rodham had been the 1976 campaign director of field operations in Indiana)[98] appointed her to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation,[99] and she served in that capacity from 1978 until the end of 1981.[100] From mid-1978 to mid-1980,[b] she was the chair of that board, the first woman to have the job.[101] During her time as chair, funding for the Corporation was expanded from $90 million to $300 million; subsequently, she successfully fought President Ronald Reagan's attempts to reduce the funding and change the nature of the organization.[89]

Following her husband's November 1978 election as Governor of Arkansas, Rodham became that state's First Lady in January 1979. She would hold that title for twelve nonconsecutive years (1979–81, 1983–92). Clinton appointed his wife to be the chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee the same year,[102] where she secured federal funds to expand medical facilities in Arkansas's poorest areas without affecting doctors' fees.[103]

Later Arkansas years

Governor Bill and First Lady Hillary Clinton attend the 1987 Dinner Honoring the Nation's Governors with President Ronald and First Lady Nancy Reagan.

Two years after leaving office, Bill Clinton returned to his job as Governor of Arkansas after he won the election of 1982. During her husband's campaign, Hillary began to use the name "Hillary Clinton", or sometimes "Mrs. Bill Clinton", to assuage the concerns of Arkansas voters; she also took a leave of absence from Rose Law to campaign for him full-time.[109] During her second stint as First Lady of Arkansas, she made a point of using Hillary Rodham Clinton as her name.[c] She was named chair of the Arkansas Education Standards Committee in 1983, where she sought to reform the state's court-sanctioned public education system.[115][116] In one of the Clinton governorship's most important initiatives, she fought a prolonged but ultimately successful battle against the Arkansas Education Association to establish mandatory teacher testing and state standards for curriculum and classroom size.[102][115] It became her introduction into the politics of a highly visible public policy effort.[83][115] In 1985, she introduced Arkansas's Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth, a program that helps parents work with their children in preschool preparedness and literacy.[117] She was named Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983 and Arkansas Mother of the Year in 1984.[118][119]

Clinton continued to practice law with the Rose Law Firm while she was First Lady of Arkansas. She earned less than the other partners, as she billed fewer hours,[120] but still made more than $200,000 in her final year there.[121] The firm considered her a "rainmaker" because she brought in clients, partly thanks to the prestige she lent it and to her corporate board connections. She was also very influential in the appointment of state judges.[121] Bill Clinton's Republican opponent in his 1986 gubernatorial re-election campaign accused the Clintons of conflict of interest, because Rose Law did state business; the Clintons countered the charge by saying that state fees were walled off by the firm before her profits were calculated.[122]

From 1982 to 1988, Clinton was on the board of directors, sometimes as chair, of the New World Foundation,[123] which funded a variety of New Leftinterest groups.[124] From 1987 to 1991, she was the first chair of the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession, created to address gender bias in the legal profession and induce the association to adopt measures to combat it.[125] She was twice named by The National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America: in 1988 and in 1991.[126] When Bill Clinton thought about not running again for governor in 1990, Hillary Clinton considered running, but private polls were unfavorable and, in the end, he ran and was re-elected for the final time.[127]

Clinton in 1992

Clinton served as Chairman of the Board of the Children's Defense Fund[5][128] and on the board of the Arkansas Children's Hospital's Legal Services (1988–92)[129] In addition to her positions with nonprofit organizations, she also held positions on the corporate board of directors of TCBY (1985–92),[130]Wal-Mart Stores (1986–92)[131] and Lafarge (1990–92).[132] TCBY and Wal-Mart were Arkansas-based companies that were also clients of Rose Law.[121][133] Clinton was the first female member on Wal-Mart's board, added following pressure on chairman Sam Walton to name a woman to it.[133] Once there, she pushed successfully for Wal-Mart to adopt more environmentally friendly practices, was largely unsuccessful in a campaign for more women to be added to the company's management and was silent about the company's famously anti-labor union practices.[131][133][134] According to Dan Kaufman, author of The Fall of Wisconsin, awareness of this later became a factor in her loss of credibility with organized labor, helping contribute to her loss in the 2016 election, where slightly less than half of union members voted for Donald Trump.[135][136]

Bill Clinton presidential campaign of 1992

Clinton received sustained national attention for the first time when her husband became a candidate for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination. Before the New Hampshire primary, tabloid publications printed assertions that Bill Clinton had engaged in an extramarital affair with Gennifer Flowers.[137] In response, the Clintons appeared together on 60 Minutes, where Bill denied the affair, but acknowledged "causing pain in my marriage".[138] This joint appearance was credited with rescuing his campaign.[139] During the campaign, Hillary made culturally disparaging remarks about Tammy Wynette's outlook on marriage as described in her classic song "Stand by Your Man",[d] and later in the campaign about how she could have chosen to be like women staying home and baking cookies and having teas, but wanted to pursue her career instead.[e] The remarks were widely criticized, particularly by those who were, or defended, stay-at-home mothers and in retrospect, were ill-considered by her own admission. Bill said that in electing him, the nation would "get two for the price of one", referring to the prominent role his wife would assume.[145] Beginning with Daniel Wattenberg's August 1992 The American Spectator article "The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock", Hillary's own past ideological and ethical record came under attack from conservatives.[94] At least twenty other articles in major publications also drew comparisons between her and Lady Macbeth.[146]

First Lady of the United States (1993–2001)

When Bill Clinton took office as president in January 1993, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the First Lady, and her press secretary reiterated that she would be using that form of her name.[c] She was the first inaugural First Lady to have earned a postgraduate degree and to have her own professional career up to the time of entering the White House.[147] She was also the first to have an office in the West Wing of the White House in addition to the usual first lady offices in the East Wing.[61][148] She was part of the innermost circle vetting appointments to the new administration and her choices filled at least eleven top-level positions and dozens more lower-level ones.[149] After Eleanor Roosevelt, Clinton was regarded as the most openly empowered presidential wife in American history.[150][151]

Some critics called it inappropriate for the first lady to play a central role in matters of public policy. Supporters pointed out that Clinton's role in policy was no different from that of other White House advisors and that voters had been well aware that she would play an active role in her husband's presidency.[152] Bill Clinton's campaign promise of "two for the price of one" led opponents to refer derisively to the Clintons as "co-presidents" or sometimes use the Arkansas label "Billary".[102][153][154] The pressures of conflicting ideas about the role of a first lady were enough to send Hillary Clinton into "imaginary discussions" with the also-politically-active Eleanor Roosevelt.[f] From the time she came to Washington, Hillary also found refuge in a prayer group of the Fellowship that featured many wives of conservative Washington figures.[158][159] Triggered in part by the death of her father in April 1993, she publicly sought to find a synthesis of Methodist teachings, liberal religious political philosophy and Tikkun editor Michael Lerner's "politics of meaning" to overcome what she saw as America's "sleeping sickness of the soul"; that would lead to a willingness "to remold society by redefining what it means to be a human being in the twentieth century, moving into a new millennium."[160][161]

Health care and other policy initiatives

Clinton gives the presentation of her health care plan, September 1993

In January 1993, President Clinton named Hillary to chair a Task Force on National Health Care Reform, hoping to replicate the success she had in leading the effort for Arkansas education reform.[162] Unconvinced regarding the merits of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), she privately urged that passage of health care reform be given higher priority.[163][164] The recommendation of the task force became known as the Clinton health care plan, a comprehensive proposal that would require employers to provide health coverage to their employees through individual health maintenance organizations. Its opponents quickly derided the plan as "Hillarycare" and it faced opposition from even some Democrats in Congress.[165] Some protesters against the proposed plan became vitriolic and during a July 1994 bus tour to rally support for the plan, Clinton wore a bulletproof vest at times.[165]

Failing to gather enough support for a floor vote in either the House or the Senate (although Democrats controlled both chambers), the proposal was abandoned in September 1994.[166] Clinton later acknowledged in her memoir that her political inexperience partly contributed to the defeat, but cited many other factors. The First Lady's approval ratings, which had generally been in the high-50s percent range during her first year, fell to 44 percent in April 1994 and 35 percent by September 1994.[167]

Republicans made the Clinton health care plan a major campaign issue of the 1994 midterm elections.[168] Republicans saw a net gain of 53 seats in the House election and seven in the Senate election, winning control of both; many analysts and pollsters found the plan to be a major factor in the Democrats' defeat, especially among independent voters.[169] The White House subsequently sought to downplay Clinton's role in shaping policy.[170] Opponents of universal health care would continue to use "Hillarycare" as a pejorative label for similar plans by others.[171]

Enactment of welfare reform was a major goal of Bill Clinton's presidency, but when the first two bills on the issue came from a Republican-controlled Congress that lacked protections for people coming off welfare, Hillary urged him to veto the bills, which he did.[174][175] A third version came up during his 1996 general election campaign that restored some of the protections but cut the scope of benefits in other areas; critics, including her past mentor Edelman, urged her to get the president to veto it again.[174] But she decided to support the bill, which became the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, as the best political compromise available.[174][175] This caused a rift with Edelman that Hillary later called "sad and painful".[175]

Clinton traveled to 79 countries during this time,[182] breaking the mark for most-traveled first lady held by Pat Nixon.[183] She did not hold a security clearance or attend National Security Council meetings, but played a role in U.S. diplomacy attaining its objectives.[184] A March 1995 five-nation trip to South Asia, on behest of the U.S. State Department and without her husband, sought to improve relations with India and Pakistan.[185] Clinton was troubled by the plight of women she encountered, but found a warm response from the people of the countries she visited and gained a better relationship with the American press corps.[186] The trip was a transformative experience for her and presaged her eventual career in diplomacy.[187]

Clinton delivering her "human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights" speech in Beijing in September 1995 (20:19)

In a September 1995 speech before the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, Clinton argued forcefully against practices that abused women around the world and in the People's Republic of China itself, declaring that "it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights".[188] Delegates from over 180 countries heard her say: "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all."[189] In doing so, she resisted both internal administration and Chinese pressure to soften her remarks.[182][189] The speech became a key moment in the empowerment of women and years later women around the world would recite Clinton's key phrases.[190] During the late 1990s, she was one of the most prominent international figures to speak out against the treatment of Afghan women by the Taliban.[191][192] She helped create Vital Voices, an international initiative sponsored by the U.S. to encourage the participation of women in the political processes of their countries.[193] It and Clinton's own visits encouraged women to make themselves heard in the Northern Ireland peace process.[194]

The Whitewater controversy was the focus of media attention from its publication in a New York Times report during the 1992 presidential campaign[195] and throughout her time as First Lady. The Clintons had lost their late-1970s investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation; at the same time, their partners in that investment, Jim and Susan McDougal, operated Madison Guaranty, a savings and loan institution that retained the legal services of Rose Law Firm[196] and may have been improperly subsidizing Whitewater losses. Madison Guaranty later failed and Clinton's work at Rose was scrutinized for a possible conflict of interest in representing the bank before state regulators that her husband had appointed.[195] She said she had done minimal work for the bank.[197] Independent counsels Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr subpoenaed Clinton's legal billing records; she said she did not know where they were.[198][199] After a two-year search, the records were found in the First Lady's White House book room and delivered to investigators in early 1996.[199] The delayed appearance of the records sparked intense interest and another investigation concerning how they surfaced and where they had been.[199] Clinton's staff attributed the problem to continual changes in White House storage areas since the move from the Arkansas Governor's Mansion.[200] On January 26, 1996, Clinton became the first First Lady to be subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury.[198] After several Independent Counsels had investigated, a final report was issued in 2000 that stated there was insufficient evidence that either Clinton had engaged in criminal wrongdoing.[201]

Scrutiny of the May 1993 firings of the White House Travel Office employees, an affair that became known as "Travelgate", began with charges that the White House had used audited financial irregularities in the Travel Office operation as an excuse to replace the staff with friends from Arkansas.[202] The 1996 discovery of a two-year-old White House memo caused the investigation to focus on whether Clinton had orchestrated the firings and whether the statements she made to investigators about her role in the firings were true.[203][204] The 2000 final Independent Counsel report concluded she was involved in the firings and that she had made "factually false" statements, but that there was insufficient evidence that she knew the statements were false, or knew that her actions would lead to firings, to prosecute her.[205]

In March 1994, newspaper reports revealed her spectacular profits from cattle futures trading in 1978–79.[206] The press made allegations that Clinton had engaged in a conflict of interest and disguised a bribery. Several individuals analyzed her trading records, but no formal investigation was made and she was never charged with any wrongdoing.[207]

An outgrowth of the "Travelgate" investigation was the June 1996 discovery of improper White House access to hundreds of FBI background reports on former Republican White House employees, an affair that some called "Filegate".[208] Accusations were made that Clinton had requested these files and that she had recommended hiring an unqualified individual to head the White House Security Office.[209] The 2000 final Independent Counsel report found no substantial or credible evidence that Clinton had any role or showed any misconduct in the matter.[208]

In early 2001, a controversy arose over gifts sent to the White House rather than personally to the Clintons; there was a question whether the furnishings were White House property or the Clintons' personal property. During the last year of Bill Clinton's time in office, those gifts were removed and shipped to the Clintons' private residence.[210][211]

Response to Lewinsky scandal

In 1998, the Clintons' private concerns became the subject of much speculation when investigations revealed that the President had engaged in an extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.[212] Events surrounding the Lewinsky scandal eventually led to the impeachment of the President by the House of Representatives; he was later acquitted by the Senate. When the allegations against her husband were first made public, Hillary Clinton stated that the allegations were part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy".[213][214] She characterized the Lewinsky charges as the latest in a long, organized, collaborative series of charges by Bill's political enemies[g] rather than any wrongdoing by her husband. She later said that she had been misled by her husband's initial claims that no affair had taken place.[216] After the evidence of President Clinton's encounters with Lewinsky became incontrovertible, she issued a public statement reaffirming her commitment to their marriage, but privately was reported to be furious at him and was unsure if she wanted to stay in the marriage.[217] The White House residence staff noticed a pronounced level of tension between the couple during this period.[218]

Public reaction varied. Women variously admired her strength and poise in private matters that were made public; sympathized with her as a victim of her husband's insensitive behavior; criticized her as being an enabler to her husband's indiscretions; or accused her of cynically staying in a failed marriage as a way of keeping or even fostering her own political influence.[219] Her public approval ratings in the wake of the revelations shot upward to around 70 percent, the highest they had ever been.[219] In her 2003 memoir, she would attribute her decision to stay married to "a love that has persisted for decades" and add: "No one understands me better and no one can make me laugh the way Bill does. Even after all these years, he is still the most interesting, energizing and fully alive person I have ever met."[220]

Issues that surrounded the Lewinsky scandal left Bill Clinton with substantial legal bills. In 2014, Hillary would state that she and Bill had left the White House "not only dead broke, but in debt." The statement may have been literally accurate but ignored the potentially enormous earning power of ex-presidents who gave paid speeches after leaving office. The couple would also have the ability to secure loans from banks.[221]

In the White House, Clinton placed donated handicrafts of contemporary American artisans, such as pottery and glassware, on rotating display in the state rooms.[61] She oversaw the restoration of the Blue Room to be historically authentic to the period of James Monroe[226] and the Map Room to how it looked during World War II.[227] Working with Arkansas interior decorator Kaki Hockersmith over an eight-year period, she oversaw extensive, privately funded redecoration efforts around the building, often trying to make it look brighter.[228] These included changing the look of the Treaty Room, a presidential study, to along 19th century lines.[227] Overall the redecoration brought mixed notices, with Victorian furnishings for the Lincoln Sitting Room being criticized the most.[228] Clinton hosted many large-scale events at the White House, including a state dinner for visiting Chinese dignitaries, a New Year's Eve celebration at the turn of the 21st century and a state dinner honoring the bicentennial of the White House in November 2000.[61]

United States Senate (2001–2013)

2000 U.S. Senate election

When New York's long-serving U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement in November 1998, several prominent Democratic figures, including Representative Charles Rangel of New York, urged Clinton to run for Moynihan's open seat in the Senate election of 2000.[229] Once she decided to run, the Clintons purchased a home in Chappaqua, New York, north of New York City, in September 1999.[230] She became the first First Lady of the United States to be a candidate for elected office.[231] Initially, Clinton expected to face Rudy Giuliani—the mayor of New York City—as her Republican opponent in the election. Giuliani withdrew from the race in May 2000 after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and matters related to his failing marriage became public. Clinton then faced Rick Lazio, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives who represented New York's 2nd congressional district. Throughout the campaign, opponents accused Clinton of carpetbagging, because she had never resided in New York State or participated in the state's politics before the 2000 Senate race.[232]

Bill de Blasio was Clinton's campaign manager. She began her drive to the U.S. Senate by visiting all 62 counties in the state, in a "listening tour" of small-group settings.[233] She devoted considerable time in traditionally Republican Upstate New York regions. Clinton vowed to improve the economic situation in those areas, promising to deliver 200,000 jobs to the state over her term. Her plan included tax credits to reward job creation and encourage business investment, especially in the high-tech sector. She called for personal tax cuts for college tuition and long-term care.[234]

The contest drew national attention. During a September debate, Lazio blundered when he seemed to invade Clinton's personal space by trying to get her to sign a fundraising agreement.[235] The campaigns of Clinton and Lazio, along with Giuliani's initial effort, spent a record combined $90 million.[236] Clinton won the election on November 7, 2000, with 55 percent of the vote to Lazio's 43 percent.[235] She was sworn in as U.S. Senator on January 3, 2001.[237] The event made her the only woman to serve in an elected office[h] while (and after) serving as First Lady.

After the Iraq War began, Clinton made trips to Iraq and Afghanistan to visit American troops stationed there. On a visit to Iraq in February 2005, Clinton noted that the insurgency had failed to disrupt the democratic elections held earlier and that parts of the country were functioning well.[251] Observing that war deployments were draining regular and reserve forces, she co-introduced legislation to increase the size of the regular U.S. Army by 80,000 soldiers to ease the strain.[252] In late 2005, Clinton said that while immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a mistake, Bush's pledge to stay "until the job is done" was also misguided, as it gave Iraqis "an open-ended invitation not to take care of themselves".[253] Her stance caused frustration among those in the Democratic Party who favored quick withdrawal.[254] Clinton supported retaining and improving health benefits for reservists and lobbied against the closure of several military bases, especially those in New York.[255][256] She used her position on the Armed Services Committee to forge close relationships with a number of high-ranking military officers.[256] (By 2014 and 2015 Clinton had fully reversed herself on the Iraq War Resolution, saying that she "got it wrong" and the vote in support had been a "mistake".[257])

2006 reelection campaign

In November 2004, Clinton announced that she would seek a second Senate term. Clinton easily won the Democratic nomination over opposition from antiwar activist Jonathan Tasini.[265] The early frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Westchester CountyDistrict AttorneyJeanine Pirro, withdrew from the contest after several months of poor campaign performance.[266] Clinton's eventual opponent in the general election was Republican candidate John Spencer, a former Mayor of Yonkers. Clinton won the election on November 7, 2006, with 67 percent of the vote to Spencer's 31 percent,[267] carrying all but four of New York's sixty-two counties.[268] Her campaign spent $36 million for her reelection, more than any other candidate for Senate in the 2006 elections. Some Democrats criticized her for spending too much in a one-sided contest, while some supporters were concerned she did not leave more funds for a potential presidential bid in 2008.[269] In the following months, she transferred $10 million of her Senate funds toward her presidential campaign.[270]

Second term

Clinton opposed the Iraq War troop surge of 2007, for both military and domestic political reasons (by the following year, she was privately acknowledging that the surge had been successful).[i] In March of that year, she voted in favor of a war-spending bill that required President Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq by a deadline; it passed almost completely along party lines[272] but was subsequently vetoed by Bush. In May, a compromise war funding bill that removed withdrawal deadlines but tied funding to progress benchmarks for the Iraqi government passed the Senate by a vote of 80–14 and would be signed by Bush; Clinton was one of those who voted against it.[273] Clinton responded to General David Petraeus's September 2007 Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq by saying, "I think that the reports that you provide to us really require a willing suspension of disbelief."[274]

2008 presidential campaign

Clinton had been preparing for a potential candidacy for U.S. President since at least early 2003.[279] On January 20, 2007, she announced via her website the formation of a presidential exploratory committee for the United States presidential election of 2008, stating "I'm in and I'm in to win."[280] No woman had ever been nominated by a major party for the presidency and no First Lady had ever run for president. When Bill Clinton became president in 1993, a blind trust was established; in April 2007, the Clintons liquidated the blind trust to avoid the possibility of ethical conflicts or political embarrassments as Hillary undertook her presidential race. Later disclosure statements revealed that the couple's worth was now upwards of $50 million,[281] and that they had earned over $100 million since 2000, with most of it coming from Bill's books, speaking engagements and other activities.[282]

Clinton addresses the 2007 CDA National Convention

Throughout the first half of 2007, Clinton led candidates competing for the Democratic presidential nomination in opinion polls for the election. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina were her strongest competitors.[250] The biggest threat to her campaign was her past support of the Iraq War, which Obama had opposed from the beginning.[250] Clinton and Obama both set records for early fundraising, swapping the money lead each quarter.[283] At the end of October, Clinton suffered a poor debate performance against Obama, Edwards and her other opponents.[284][285] Obama's message of change began to resonate with the Democratic electorate better than Clinton's message of experience.[286]

In the first vote of 2008, she placed third in the January 3 Iowa Democratic caucus behind Obama and Edwards.[287] Obama gained ground in national polling in the next few days, with all polls predicting a victory for him in the New Hampshire primary.[288] Clinton gained a surprise win there on January 8, defeating Obama narrowly.[289] It was the first time a woman had won a major American party's presidential primary for the purposes of delegate selection.[290] Explanations for Clinton's New Hampshire comeback varied but often centered on her being seen more sympathetically, especially by women, after her eyes welled with tears and her voice broke while responding to a voter's question the day before the election.[291]

The nature of the contest fractured in the next few days. Several remarks by Bill Clinton and other surrogates,[292] and a remark by Hillary Clinton concerning Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon B. Johnson,[j] were perceived by many as, accidentally or intentionally, limiting Obama as a racially oriented candidate or otherwise denying the post-racial significance and accomplishments of his campaign.[293] Despite attempts by both Hillary and Obama to downplay the issue, Democratic voting became more polarized as a result, with Clinton losing much of her support among African Americans.[292][294] She lost by a two-to-one margin to Obama in the January 26 South Carolina primary,[294] setting up, with Edwards soon dropping out, an intense two-person contest for the twenty-two February 5 Super Tuesday states. Bill Clinton had made more statements attracting criticism for their perceived racial implications late in the South Carolina campaign and his role was seen as damaging enough to her that a wave of supporters within and outside of the campaign said the former President "needs to stop".[295] The South Carolina campaign had done lasting damage to Hillary Clinton, eroding her support among the Democratic establishment and leading to the prized endorsement of Obama by Ted Kennedy.[296]

State-by-state popular votes in the Democratic primaries and caucuses, shaded by percentage won: Obama in purple, Clinton in green. (Popular vote winners and delegate winners differed in New Hampshire, Nevada, Missouri, Texas and Guam.)

The Clinton campaign had counted on winning the nomination by Super Tuesday and was unprepared financially and logistically for a prolonged effort; lagging in Internet fundraising as Clinton began loaning money to her campaign.[286][300] There was continuous turmoil within the campaign staff and she made several top-level personnel changes.[300][301] Obama won the next eleven February contests across the country, often by large margins and took a significant pledged delegate lead over Clinton.[299][300] On March 4, Clinton broke the string of losses by winning in Ohio among other places,[300] where her criticism of NAFTA, a major legacy of her husband's presidency, helped in a state where the trade agreement was unpopular.[302] Throughout the campaign, Obama dominated caucuses, for which the Clinton campaign largely ignored preparation.[286][299] Obama did well in primaries where African Americans or younger, college-educated, or more affluent voters were heavily represented; Clinton did well in primaries where Hispanics or older, non-college-educated, or working-class white voters predominated.[303][304] Behind in delegates, Clinton's best hope of winning the nomination came in persuading uncommitted, party-appointed superdelegates.[305]

Following the final primaries on June 3, 2008, Obama had gained enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee.[306] In a speech before her supporters on June 7, Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama.[307] By campaign's end, Clinton had won 1,640 pledged delegates to Obama's 1,763;[308] at the time of the clinching, Clinton had 286 superdelegates to Obama's 395,[309] with those numbers widening to 256 versus 438 once Obama was acknowledged the winner.[308] Clinton and Obama each received over 17 million votes during the nomination process[k] with both breaking the previous record.[310] Clinton was the first woman to run in the primary or caucus of every state and she eclipsed, by a very wide margin, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm's 1972 marks for most votes garnered and delegates won by a woman.[290] Clinton gave a passionate speech supporting Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and campaigned frequently for him in fall 2008, which concluded with his victory over McCain in the general election on November 4.[311] Clinton's campaign ended up severely in debt; she owed millions of dollars to outside vendors and wrote off the $13 million that she lent it herself. The debt was eventually paid off by the beginning of 2013.[312]

Secretary of State (2009–2013)

Nomination and confirmation

Associate Judge Kathryn Oberly administers the oath of office of Secretary of State to Hillary Rodham Clinton as her husband Bill Clinton holds the Bible

In mid-November 2008, President-elect Obama and Clinton discussed the possibility of her serving as U.S. Secretary of State in his administration.[313] She was initially quite reluctant, but on November 20, she told Obama she would accept the position.[314][315] On December 1, President-elect Obama formally announced that Clinton would be his nominee for Secretary of State.[316][317] Clinton said she did not want to leave the Senate, but that the new position represented a "difficult and exciting adventure".[317] As part of the nomination and in order to relieve concerns of conflict of interest, Bill Clinton agreed to accept several conditions and restrictions regarding his ongoing activities and fundraising efforts for the William J. Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative.[318]

The appointment required a Saxbe fix, passed and signed into law in December 2008.[319] Confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began on January 13, 2009, a week before the Obama inauguration; two days later, the Committee voted 16–1 to approve Clinton.[320] By this time, her public approval rating had reached 65 percent, the highest point since the Lewinsky scandal.[321] On January 21, 2009, Clinton was confirmed in the full Senate by a vote of 94–2.[322] Clinton took the oath of office of Secretary of State, resigning from the Senate later that day.[323] She became the first former first lady to serve in the United States Cabinet.[324]

First half of tenure

Clinton spent her initial days as Secretary of State telephoning dozens of world leaders and indicating that U.S. foreign policy would change direction: "We have a lot of damage to repair."[325] She advocated an expanded role in global economic issues for the State Department and cited the need for an increased U.S. diplomatic presence, especially in Iraq where the Defense Department had conducted diplomatic missions.[326] Clinton announced the most ambitious of her departmental reforms, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, which establishes specific objectives for the State Department's diplomatic missions abroad; it was modeled after a similar process in the Defense Department that she was familiar with from her time on the Senate Armed Services Committee.[327] The first such review was issued in late 2010 and called for the U.S. leading through "civilian power" as a cost-effective way of responding to international challenges and defusing crises.[328] It also sought to institutionalize goals of empowering women throughout the world.[189] A cause Clinton advocated throughout her tenure was the adoption of cookstoves in the developing world, to foster cleaner and more environmentally sound food preparation and reduce smoke dangers to women.[314]

In an internal debate regarding the war in Afghanistan during 2009, Clinton sided with the military's recommendations for a maximal "Afghanistan surge", recommending 40,000 troops and no public deadline for withdrawal; she prevailed over Vice President Joe Biden's opposition, but eventually supported Obama's compromise plan to send an additional 30,000 troops and tie the surge to a timetable for eventual withdrawal.[256][329] In March 2009, Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with a "reset button" symbolizing U.S. attempts to rebuild ties with that country under its new president, Dmitry Medvedev.[330][331] The photo op was remembered for a mistranslation into Russian. The policy, which became known as the Russian reset, led to improved cooperation in several areas during Medvedev's time in office, but relations would worsen considerably following Vladimir Putin's return to the position in 2012.[330] In October 2009, on a trip to Switzerland, Clinton's intervention overcame last-minute snags and saved the signing of an historic Turkish–Armenian accord that established diplomatic relations and opened the border between the two long-hostile nations.[332][333] In Pakistan, she engaged in several unusually blunt discussions with students, talk show hosts and tribal elders, in an attempt to repair the Pakistani image of the U.S.[187][l] Beginning in 2010, she helped organize a diplomatic isolation and international sanctions regime against Iran, in an effort to force curtailment of that country's nuclear program; this would eventually lead to the multinational Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action being agreed to in 2015.[314][335][336]

Clinton and Obama forged a good working relationship without power struggles; she was a team player within the administration and a defender of it to the outside and was careful that neither she nor her husband would upstage the president.[337][338] Clinton formed an alliance with Secretary of Defense Gates as they shared similar strategic outlooks.[339] Obama and Clinton both approached foreign policy as a largely non-ideological, pragmatic exercise.[314] She met with him weekly but did not have the close, daily relationship that some of her predecessors had had with their presidents;[338] moreover, certain key areas of policymaking were kept inside the White House or Pentagon.[340][341] Nevertheless, the president had trust in her actions.[314]

In a prepared speech in January 2010, Clinton drew analogies between the Iron Curtain and the free and unfree Internet.[342] Chinese officials reacted negatively towards it and the speech garnered attention as the first time a senior American official had clearly defined the Internet as a key element of American foreign policy.[343] In July 2010, she visited Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan and Afghanistan, all the while preparing for the July 31 wedding of daughter Chelsea amid much media attention.[344]

Second half of tenure

The 2011 Egyptian protests posed the most challenging foreign policy crisis for the administration yet.[345] Clinton's public response quickly evolved from an early assessment that the government of Hosni Mubarak was "stable", to a stance that there needed to be an "orderly transition [to] a democratic participatory government", to a condemnation of violence against the protesters.[346][347] Obama came to rely upon Clinton's advice, organization and personal connections in the behind-the-scenes response to developments.[345] As Arab Spring protests spread throughout the region, Clinton was at the forefront of a U.S. response that she recognized was sometimes contradictory, backing some regimes while supporting protesters against others.[348]

The London meeting to discuss NATO military intervention in Libya, March 29, 2011

During April 2011, internal deliberations of the president's innermost circle of advisors over whether to order U.S. special forces to conduct a raid into Pakistan against Osama bin Laden, Clinton was among those who argued in favor, saying the importance of getting bin Laden outweighed the risks to the U.S. relationship with Pakistan.[356][357] Following completion of the mission on May 2, which resulted in bin Laden's death, Clinton played a key role in the administration's decision not to release photographs of the dead al-Qaeda leader.[358] During internal discussions regarding Iraq in 2011, Clinton argued for keeping a residual force of up to 10,000–20,000 U.S. troops there (all ended up being withdrawn after negotiations for a revised U.S.–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement failed).[256][359]

Clinton meeting with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi during her December 2011 visit to Myanmar

During the Syrian Civil War, Clinton and the Obama administration initially sought to persuade Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to engage popular demonstrations with reform, then as government violence allegedly rose in August 2011, called for him to resign from the presidency.[365] The administration joined several countries in delivering non-lethal assistance to so-called rebels opposed to the Assad government and humanitarian groups working in Syria.[366] During mid-2012, Clinton formed a plan with CIA Director David Petraeus to further strengthen the opposition by arming and training vetted groups of Syrian rebels, but the proposal was rejected by the White House officials who were reluctant to become entangled in the conflict and who feared that extremists hidden among the rebels might turn the weapons against other targets.[361][367]

In December 2012, Clinton was hospitalized for a few days for treatment of a blood clot in her right transversevenous sinus.[368] Her doctors had discovered the clot during a follow-up examination for a concussion she had sustained when she fainted and fell nearly three weeks earlier, as a result of severe dehydration from a viral intestinal ailment acquired during a trip to Europe.[368][369] The clot, which caused no immediate neurological injury, was treated with anticoagulant medication and her doctors have said she has made a full recovery.[369][370][m]

Overall themes

Clinton, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on Operation Neptune Spear in the White House Situation Room on May 1, 2011. Everyone in the room is watching a live feed from drones operating over the Osama bin Laden complex.

Throughout her time in office and in her final speech concluding it, Clinton viewed "smart power" as the strategy for asserting U.S. leadership and values—in a world of varied threats, weakened central governments and increasingly important nongovernmental entities—by combining military hard power with diplomacy and U.S. soft power capacities in global economics, development aid, technology, creativity and human rights advocacy.[349][374] As such, she became the first secretary of state to methodically implement the smart power approach.[375] In debates over use of military force, she was generally one of the more hawkish voices in the administration.[256][339][359] In August 2011 she hailed the ongoing multinational military intervention in Libya and the initial U.S. response towards the Syrian Civil War as examples of smart power in action.[376]

Clinton greatly expanded the State Department's use of social media, including Facebook and Twitter, both to get its message out and to help empower citizens of foreign countries vis-à-vis their governments.[349] And in the Mideast turmoil, Clinton particularly saw an opportunity to advance one of the central themes of her tenure, the empowerment and welfare of women and girls worldwide.[189] Moreover, in a formulation that became known as the "Hillary Doctrine", she viewed women's rights as critical for U.S. security interests, due to a link between the level of violence against women and gender inequality within a state and the instability and challenge to international security of that state.[337][377] In turn, there was a trend of women around the world finding more opportunities and in some cases feeling safer, as the result of her actions and visibility.[378]

Clinton visited 112 countries during her tenure, making her the most widely traveled secretary of state[379][n] (Time magazine wrote that "Clinton's endurance is legendary").[349] The first secretary of state to visit countries such as Togo and East Timor, she believed that in-person visits were more important than ever in the virtual age.[382] As early as March 2011, she indicated she was not interested in serving a second term as Secretary of State should Obama be re-elected in 2012;[350] in December 2012, following that re-election, Obama nominated Senator John Kerry to be Clinton's successor.[369] Her last day as Secretary of State was February 1, 2013.[383] Upon her departure, analysts commented that Clinton's tenure did not bring any signature diplomatic breakthroughs as some other Secretaries of State had,[340][341] and highlighted her focus on goals that she thought were less tangible but would have more lasting effect.[384]

On December 19, a panel led by Thomas R. Pickering and Michael Mullen issued its report on the matter. It was sharply critical of State Department officials in Washington for ignoring requests for more guards and safety upgrades and for failing to adapt security procedures to a deteriorating security environment.[387] It focused its criticism on the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security and Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs; four State Department officials at the assistant secretary level and below were removed from their posts as a consequence.[388] Clinton said she accepted the conclusions of the report and that changes were underway to implement its suggested recommendations.[387]

Clinton gave testimony to two congressional foreign affairs committees on January 23, 2013, regarding the Benghazi attack. She defended her actions in response to the incident and, while still accepting formal responsibility, said she had had no direct role in specific discussions beforehand regarding consulate security.[389] Congressional Republicans challenged her on several points, to which she responded. In particular, after persistent questioning about whether or not the administration had issued inaccurate "talking points" after the attack, Clinton responded with the much-quoted rejoinder, "With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they'd they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator."[389][390] In November 2014, the House Intelligence Committee issued a report that concluded there had been no wrongdoing in the administration's response to the attack.[391]

The House Select Committee on Benghazi was created in May 2014 and conducted a two-year investigation related to the 2012 attack.[392] Its actions were often seen through the prism of domestic politics.[392][393] This was especially the case in September 2015, when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy credited the Benghazi hearings with lowering Clinton's poll numbers, thereby contradicting the Republicans' previous talking points on the investigation.[392][394] On October 22, 2015, Clinton testified at an all-day and nighttime session before the committee.[395][396] The hearing included many heated exchanges between committee members and Clinton and among the committee members themselves.[395] Clinton was widely seen as emerging largely unscathed from the hearing, because of what the media perceived as a calm and unfazed demeanor and a lengthy, meandering, repetitive line of questioning from the committee.[397] The committee issued competing final reports in June 2016 that broke along partisan lines,[392] with the Republican report offering some new details about the attack but no new evidence of culpability by Clinton.[393]

Email controversy

A controversy arose in March 2015, when the State Department's inspector general revealed that Clinton had exclusively used personal email accounts on a non-government, privately maintained server—instead of email accounts maintained on federal government servers—when conducting official business during her tenure as secretary of state. Some experts, officials, members of Congress and political opponents contended that her use of private messaging system software and a private server violated State Department protocols and procedures and federal laws and regulations governing recordkeeping requirements.[398] The controversy occurred against the backdrop of Clinton's 2016 presidential election campaign and hearings held by the House Select Committee on Benghazi.[399][400]

In a joint statement released on July 15, 2015, the inspector general of the State Department and the inspector general of the intelligence community said that their review of the emails found information that was classified when sent, remained so at the time of their inspection and "never should have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system." They also stated unequivocally that this classified information should never have been stored outside of secure government computer systems. Clinton had said over a period of months that she kept no classified information on the private server that she set up in her house.[401] Government policy, reiterated in the nondisclosure agreement signed by Clinton as part of gaining her security clearance, is that sensitive information can be considered as classified even if not marked as such.[402] After allegations were raised that some of the emails in question fell into the so-called "born classified" category, an FBI probe was initiated regarding how classified information was handled on the Clinton server.[403]The New York Times reported in February 2016 that nearly 2,100 emails stored on Clinton's server were retroactively marked classified by the State Department.[404] Additionally, the intelligence community's inspector general wrote Congress to say that some of the emails "contained classified State Department information when originated."[405] In May 2016, the inspector general of the State Department criticized her use of a private email server while secretary of state, stating that she had not requested permission for this and would not have received it if she had asked.[406]

Clinton maintained that she did not send or receive any emails from her personal server that were confidential at the time they were sent. In a Democratic debate with Bernie Sanders on February 4, 2016, Clinton said, "I never sent or received any classified material – they are retroactively classifying it." On July 2, 2016, Clinton stated: "Let me repeat what I have repeated for many months now, I never received nor sent any material that was marked classified."[407][408]

On July 5, 2016, the FBI concluded its investigation. In a statement, FBI director James Comey said:

110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were "up-classified" to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.[404][409]

Three emails, out of 30,000, were found to be marked as classified, although they lacked classified headers and were only marked with a small "c" in parentheses, described as "portion markings" by Comey. He also said it was possible Clinton was not "technically sophisticated" enough to understand what the three classified markings meant.[409] The probe found that Clinton used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, both sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. The FBI assessed that it "is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal email account." Comey stated that although Clinton or her colleagues were "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information", the FBI would recommend to the Justice Department that "no charges are appropriate in this case."[404] On July 6, 2016, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch confirmed that the probe into Clinton's use of private email servers while secretary of state will be closed without criminal charges.[410]

On October 28, 2016, Comey notified Congress that the FBI started looking into newly discovered emails. Law enforcement officials stated while investigating allegedly illicit text messages from Anthony Weiner husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina, they discovered emails related to Clinton's private server on a laptop computer belonging to Weiner. On November 6, Comey notified Congress that the FBI had not changed its conclusion reached in July.[411] The notification was later cited by Clinton as a factor in her loss in the 2016 presidential election.[412]

On January 4, 2018, the Daily Beast reported that Justice Department officials were again looking into Clinton's use of a private email server. The Daily Beast, citing "a former senior DOJ official familiar with department leadership's thinking," reported that Justice Department officials were "acutely aware of demands from President Donald Trump" to investigate Clinton.[413]

Clinton Foundation and speeches

When Clinton left the State Department, she returned to private life for the first time in thirty years.[414] She and her daughter joined her husband as named members of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation in 2013.[415] There she focused on early childhood development efforts, including an initiative called Too Small to Fail and a $600 million initiative to encourage the enrollment of girls in secondary schools worldwide, led by former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.[415][416]

Clinton also led the No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project, a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to gather and study data on the progress of women and girls around the world since the Beijing conference in 1995;[417] its March 2015 report said that while "There has never been a better time in history to be born a woman ... this data shows just how far we still have to go."[418] The foundation began accepting new donations from foreign governments, which it had stopped doing while she was secretary.[o] However, even though the Clinton Foundation had stopped taking donations from foreign governments, they continued to take large donations from foreign citizens who were sometimes linked to their governments.[421]

She began work on another volume of memoirs and made appearances on the paid speaking circuit.[422] There she received $200,000–225,000 per engagement, often appearing before Wall Street firms or at business conventions.[422][423] She also made some unpaid speeches on behalf of the foundation.[422] For the fifteen months ending in March 2015, Clinton earned over $11 million from her speeches.[424] For the overall period 2007–14, the Clintons earned almost $141 million, paid some $56 million in federal and state taxes and donated about $15 million to charity.[425] As of 2015[update], she was estimated to be worth over $30 million on her own, or $45–53 million with her husband.[426]

Clinton resigned from the foundation's board in April 2015, when she began her presidential campaign and the foundation said it would accept new foreign governmental donations from six Western nations only.[o]

2016 presidential campaign

Clinton campaigning for president in Manchester, New Hampshire, in October 2016, with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (seated)

On April 12, 2015, Clinton formally announced her candidacy for the presidency in the 2016 election.[427] She had a campaign-in-waiting already in place, including a large donor network, experienced operatives and the Ready for Hillary and Priorities USA Action political action committees and other infrastructure.[428] The campaign's headquarters were established in the New York City borough of Brooklyn.[429] Focuses of her campaign included raising middle class incomes, establishing universal preschool and making college more affordable and improving the Affordable Care Act.[430][431] Initially considered a prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination,[427] Clinton faced an unexpectedly strong challenge from democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose longtime stance against the influence of corporations and the wealthy in American politics resonated with a dissatisfied citizenry troubled by the effects of income inequality in the U.S. and contrasted with Clinton's Wall Street ties.[423][431]

In the initial contest of the primaries season, Clinton only very narrowly won the Iowa Democratic caucuses, held February 1, over an increasingly popular Sanders,[432][433] making her the first woman to win the Iowa caucuses.[432] In the first primary, held in New Hampshire on February 9, she lost to Sanders by a wide margin.[434] Sanders was an increasing threat in the next contest, the Nevada caucuses on February 20,[435] but Clinton managed a five-percentage-point win, aided by final-days campaigning among casino workers.[436] Clinton followed that with a lopsided victory in the South Carolina primary on February 27.[435] These two victories stabilized her campaign and showed an avoidance of the management turmoil that harmed her 2008 effort.[435]

On March 1 ("Super Tuesday"), Clinton won seven of eleven contests, including a string of dominating victories across the South buoyed, as in South Carolina, by African-American voters and opened up a significant lead in pledged delegates over Sanders.[437] She maintained this delegate lead across subsequent contests during the primary season, with a consistent pattern throughout. Sanders did better among younger, whiter, more rural and more liberal voters and in states that held caucuses or where eligibility was open to independents, while Clinton did better among older and more black and Hispanic voter populations and in states that held primaries or where eligibility was restricted to registered Democrats.[438][439][440]

By June 5, 2016, she had earned enough pledged delegates and supportive superdelegates for the media to consider her the presumptive nominee.[441] On June 7, after winning most of the states in the final major round of primaries, Clinton held a victory rally in Brooklyn in which she became the first woman to claim the status of presumptive nominee for a major American political party.[442] By campaign's end, Clinton had won 2,219 pledged delegates to Sanders' 1,832; with an estimated 594 superdelegates compared to Sanders' 47.[443] She received almost 17 million votes during the nominating process, as opposed to Sanders' 13 million.[444]

United States Senator Bernie Sanders endorsing Clinton in New Hampshire, July 2016

Clinton held a significant lead in national polls over Trump throughout most of 2016. In early July, Trump and Clinton became tied in major polls following the FBI's conclusion of its investigation into her emails.[447]FBI DirectorJames Comey concluded Clinton had been "extremely careless" in her handling of classified government material.[448] In late July, Trump gained his first lead over Clinton in major polls following a 3 to 4 percentage point convention bounce at the Republican National Convention, in line with the average bounce in conventions since 2004, although it is toward the small side by historical standards.[449][450] Following Clinton's 7 percentage point convention bounce at the Democratic National Convention, she regained a significant lead in national polls at the start of August.[451][452]

Clinton delivering her concession speech

Clinton was defeated by Donald Trump in the November 8, 2016 presidential election.[453] By the early morning hours of November 9, Trump had received 279 projected electoral college votes, with 270 needed to win and media sources proclaimed him the winner.[454] Clinton then phoned Trump to concede and to congratulate him on his victory, whereupon Trump gave a victory speech.[455] The next morning Clinton made a public concession speech in which she acknowledged the pain of her loss, but called on her supporters to accept Trump as president, saying "We owe him an open mind and a chance to lead."[456] Though Clinton lost the election by only capturing 232 electors to Trump's 306, she won the popular vote by more than 2.7 million votes, or 2.1% of the voter base.[457] She is the fifth presidential candidate in U.S. history to win the popular vote but lose the election.[458][459] She won the most votes of any candidate who did not take office, and the third-most votes of any candidate in history,[460][461] though she did not have the greatest percentage win of a losing candidate (Andrew Jackson won the popular vote by 10.4% but lost to John Quincy Adams).[462]

Post-2016 election activities

Bill and Hillary Clinton attending Donald Trump's inauguration

In their respective capacities as a former president and a former First Lady, Bill and Hillary Clinton attended the inauguration of Donald Trump with their daughter, Chelsea. The morning of the inauguration Clinton wrote on her Twitter account, "I'm here today to honor our democracy & its enduring values, I will never stop believing in our country & its future."[464]

On March 17, 2017 Clinton delivered a St. Patrick's Day speech in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Making reference to reports of her being seen taking walks in the woods around Chappaqua following her loss in the presidential election,[465][466] Clinton indicated her readiness to emerge from "the woods" and become politically active again.[465]

In April 2017, Clinton commented that she will not seek public office again.[467] Future comments by Clinton have led some to cast doubt on this statement.

In May 2017 Clinton announced the formation of Onward Together, a new political action committee that she wrote as being "dedicated to advancing the progressive vision that earned nearly 66 million votes in the last election".[468]

In a June 2017 appearance at a Baltimore fundraiser for the Elijah Cummings Youth Program in Israel (ECYP), Clinton condemned the 2017 Portland train attack: "When violence motivated by hatred from, Portland, Oregon, to College Park, ends the lives of young Americans, this program's mission of spreading tolerance is more urgent than ever."[469] On June 14, after the Congressional baseball shooting, Clinton tweeted, "2 sides take the field tomorrow, but we're all ultimately on one team. My thoughts are with the members of Congress, staff & heroic police."[470]

In October 2018, Hillary and Bill Clinton announced plans to go on a 13-city speaking tour in various cities in the United States and Canada between November 2018 and May 2019.[471]

A package that contained a pipe bomb was sent to Clinton's home in Washington, D.C, on October 24, 2018. The package was intercepted by the Secret Service. Similar packages were sent to several other Democratic leaders and to CNN.[473][474]

Comments on President Trump

On February 27, 2017, Clinton called on President Trump to address the shooting of two Indian men by Adam Purinton.[475] On April 6, in response to the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack, Clinton said the U.S. should take out the air fields of Bashar al-Assad and thereby "prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them."[476] On May 2, Clinton said Trump's use of Twitter "doesn't work" when pursuing important negotiations and North Korea should not be consulted with an abandoning "of a broader strategic framework to try to get China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, to put the kind of pressure on the regime that will finally bring them to the negotiating table with some kind of realistic prospect for change."[477] While delivering the commencement speech at her alma mater Wellesley College on May 26, Clinton asserted President Trump's 2018 budget proposal was "a con" for underfunding domestic programs.[478] On June 1, when President Trump announced withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, Clinton tweeted that it was a "historic mistake."[479]

On March 24, 2017, after the postponing of a Congressional vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Clinton labeled the day "a victory for the 24,000,000 people at risk of losing their health insurance" and warned of an ongoing battle to maintain coverage.[480] Clinton went on to call the American Health Care Act "a disastrous bill" during a San Francisco speech four days later.[481] On May 4, after the House narrowly passed the American Health Care Act, Clinton dubbed it a "shameful failure of policy & morality by GOP".[482] On June 23, the day after Senate Republicans revealed a draft of their healthcare reform legislation, Clinton tweeted, "This is a critical moment about choosing people over politics. Speak out against this bill."[483]

Political positions

Several organizations have attempted to measure Clinton's place on the political spectrum scientifically using her Senate votes. National Journal's 2004 study of roll-call votes assigned Clinton a rating of 30 in the political spectrum, relative to the Senate at the time, with a rating of 1 being most liberal and 100 being most conservative.[484]National Journal's subsequent rankings placed her as the 32nd-most liberal senator in 2006 and 16th-most liberal senator in 2007.[485] A 2004 analysis by political scientists Joshua D. Clinton of Princeton University and Simon Jackman and Doug Rivers of Stanford University found her to be likely the sixth-to-eighth-most liberal senator.[486]The Almanac of American Politics, edited by Michael Barone and Richard E. Cohen, rated her votes from 2003 through 2006 as liberal or conservative, with 100 as the highest rating, in three areas: Economic, Social and Foreign. Averaged for the four years, the ratings are: Economic = 75 liberal, 23 conservative; Social = 83 liberal, 6 conservative; Foreign = 66 liberal, 30 conservative. Total average = 75 liberal, 20 conservative.[p] According to FiveThirtyEight's measure of political ideology, "Clinton was one of the most liberal members during her time in the Senate."[487]

Organizations have also attempted to give newer assessments of Clinton once she reentered elective politics in 2015. Based on her stated positions from the 1990s to the present, On the Issues places her in their "Left Liberal" region on their two-dimensional grid of social and economic ideologies, with a social score of 80 on a scale of 0 more-restrictive to 100 less-government stances and an economic score of 10 on a scale of 0 more-restrictive to 100 less-government stances.[488] Crowdpac, which does a data aggregation of campaign contributions, votes and speeches, gives her a 6.5L rating on a one-dimensional left-right scale from 10L (most liberal) to 10C (most conservative).[489] Through 2008, she had an average lifetime 90 percent "Liberal Quotient" from Americans for Democratic Action,[490] and a lifetime 8 percent rating from the American Conservative Union.[491]

In March 2016, Clinton laid out a detailed economic plan, which The New York Times called "optimistic" and "wide-ranging". Basing her economic philosophy on inclusive capitalism, Clinton proposed a "clawback" that would rescind tax relief and other benefits for companies that move jobs overseas; providing incentives for companies that share profits with employees, communities and the environment, rather than focusing on short-term profits to increase stock value and rewarding shareholders; increasing collective bargaining rights; and placing an "exit tax" on companies that move their headquarters out of America in order to pay a lower tax rate overseas.[492] Clinton currently opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) (though she previously described it as "the gold standard"[493] of trade deals). She supports the U.S. Export-Import Bank and holds that "any trade deal has to produce jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect our security".[494][495] As Senator (2001–2009), her record on trade was mixed, voting in favor of some trade agreements but not others.[494]

Given the climate of unlimited campaign contributions following the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, Clinton called for a constitutional amendment to limit "unaccountable money" in politics.[496] In July 2016, she "committed" to introducing a U.S. constitutional amendment that would result in overturning the 2010 Citizens United decision.[497][498] On December 7, 2015, in The New York Times, Clinton presented her detailed plans for regulating Wall Street financial activities.[499]

She supported "equal pay for equal work," to address current shortfalls in how much women are paid to do the same jobs men do.[502] Clinton has explicitly focused on family issues and supports universal preschool.[496] These programs would be funded by proposing tax increases on the wealthy, including a "fair share surcharge".[503]

On LGBT rights, she supported the right to same-sex marriage.[496] Clinton first expressed support for a national right to same-sex marriage in 2013; in 2000, she had been against such unions altogether and in 2006, she said only that she would support a state's decision to permit same-sex marriages.[507] In 2000, she was the first First Lady to march in an LGBT pride parade.[508] In 2016, she was the first major-party presidential candidate ever to write an op-ed for an LGBT newspaper (Philadelphia Gay News).[509]

Clinton held that allowing undocumented immigrants to have a path to citizenship "[i]s at its heart a family issue",[510] and expressed support for Obama's Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) program, which would allow up to five million undocumented immigrants to gain deferral of deportation and authorization to legally work in the United States.[511][512] She opposed and criticized Trump's call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States.[513] However, in 2014, Clinton opposed DACA.[514]

Clinton expressed support for Common Core.[515] She said, "The really unfortunate argument that's been going on around Common Core, it's very painful because the Common Core started off as a bipartisan effort. It was actually nonpartisan. It wasn't politicized.... Iowa has had a testing system based on a core curriculum for a really long time. And [speaking to Iowans] you see the value of it, you understand why that helps you organize your whole education system. And a lot of states unfortunately haven't had that and so don't understand the value of a core, in this sense a Common Core."[516]

In 2000, Clinton advocated for the elimination of the electoral college.[526] She promised to co-sponsor legislation that would abolish it, thereby resulting in the direct election of the president.[527][528]

Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C.—as First Lady of the United States,

Metropolitan Community United Methodist Church in New York, New York—currently a congregant.

She discussed her faith at 2014 United Methodist Women church rally at the Kentucky International Convention Center in Louisville, Kentucky.[529] However, she has infrequently discussed her faith while campaigning.[530][531] Clinton has openly discussed her Christianity on several occasions, discussing for example the importance of loving one's neighbor as oneself, of helping the poor and "creating opportunities for others to be lifted up".[531] Clinton has also expressed disappointment that "Christianity, which has such great love at its core, is sometimes used to condemn so quickly and judge so harshly."[531]

Professor Paul Kengor, author of God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life, has suggested that Clinton's political positions are rooted in her faith. Clinton often expresses a certain maxim which is often attributed to John Wesley: "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can."[530] In fact, Clinton repeated this saying in her acceptance speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, adding that her mother Dorothy "made sure I learned [these] words from our Methodist faith."[532]

Writings and recordings

As First Lady of the United States, Clinton published a weekly syndicated newspaper column titled "Talking It Over" from 1995 to 2000.[533][534] It focused on her experiences and those of women, children and families she met during her travels around the world.[5]

In 2003, Clinton released a 562-page autobiography, Living History, for which publisher Simon & Schuster paid Clinton a near-record advance of $8 million.[538] The book set a first-week sales record for a nonfiction work,[539] went on to sell more than one million copies in the first month following publication,[540] and was translated into twelve foreign languages.[541] Clinton's audio recording of the book earned her a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.[542]

In 2014, Clinton published a second memoir, Hard Choices, which focused on her time as Secretary of State. As of July 2015[update], the book has sold about 280,000 copies.[543]

In 2016, Clinton and Tim Kaine published Stronger Together, which outlined their vision for the United States if they had won the 2016 presidential election.[544]

Clinton authored her third memoir, What Happened, about the 2016 election, which was released on September 12, 2017, by Simon & Schuster, in print, e-book, and audio read by the author.[545] A book tour and series of interviews and personal appearances were arranged for the launch.[546]

Cultural and political image

Over a hundred books and scholarly works have been written about Clinton, from many perspectives. A 2006 survey by the New York Observer found "a virtual cottage industry" of "anti-Clinton literature", put out by Regnery Publishing and other conservative imprints, with titles such as Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House, Hillary's Scheme: Inside the Next Clinton's Ruthless Agenda to Take the White House and Can She Be Stopped?: Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless ... Books praising Clinton did not sell nearly as well[547] (other than the memoirs written by her and her husband). When she ran for Senate in 2000, a number of fundraising groups such as Save Our Senate and the Emergency Committee to Stop Hillary Rodham Clinton sprang up to oppose her.[548] Van Natta found that Republican and conservative groups viewed her as a reliable "bogeyman" to mention in fundraising letters, on a par with Ted Kennedy and the equivalent of Democratic and liberal appeals mentioning Newt Gingrich.[549]

Clinton has also been featured in the media and popular culture from a wide spectrum of varying perspectives. In 1995, writer Todd S. Purdum of The New York Times characterized Clinton as a Rorschach test,[550] an assessment echoed at the time by feminist writer and activist Betty Friedan, who said, "Coverage of Hillary Clinton is a massive Rorschach test of the evolution of women in our society."[551] She has been the subject of many satirical impressions on Saturday Night Live, beginning with her time as first lady and has made guest appearances on the show herself, in 2008 and in 2015, to face-off with her doppelgängers.[552][553]Jonathan Mann wrote songs about her, including but not limited to "The Hillary Shimmy Song", which went viral.[554][555][556][557]

Clinton worked at Rose Law Firm for fifteen years. Her professional career and political involvement set the stage for public reaction to her as First Lady.

Clinton in April 2015

Clinton has often been described in the popular media as a polarizing figure, with some arguing otherwise.[558] Going into the early stages of her presidential campaign for 2008, a Time magazine cover showed a large picture of her, with two checkboxes labeled "Love Her", "Hate Her",[559] while Mother Jones titled its profile of her "Harpy, Hero, Heretic: Hillary".[560] Following Clinton's "choked up moment" and related incidents in the run-up to the January 2008 New Hampshire primary, both The New York Times and Newsweek found that discussion of gender's role in the campaign had moved into the national political discourse.[561][562]Newsweek editor Jon Meacham summed the relationship between Clinton and the American public by saying that the New Hampshire events "brought an odd truth to light: though Hillary Rodham Clinton has been on the periphery or in the middle of national life for decades ... she is one of the most recognizable but least understood figures in American politics."[562]

Once she became Secretary of State, Clinton's image seemed to improve dramatically among the American public and become one of a respected world figure.[337][563] Her favorability ratings dropped, however, after she left office and began to be viewed in the context of partisan politics once more.[564] By September 2015, with her 2016 presidential campaign underway and beset by continued reports regarding her private email usage at the State Department, her ratings had slumped to some of her lowest levels ever.[565] During 2016 she acknowledged that: "I'm not a natural politician, in case you haven't noticed."[566]

See also

Notes

^Research by The New York Sun in 2007 found it unclear exactly which cases beyond child custody ones Rodham worked on at the Treuhaft firm.[55] Anti-Clinton writers such as Barbara Olson would later charge Hillary Clinton with never repudiating Treuhaft's ideology, and for retaining social and political ties with his wife and fellow communist Jessica Mitford.[56] Further Sun research revealed that Mitford and Hillary Clinton were not close, and had a falling out over a 1980 Arkansas prisoner case.[57]

^ abAs of 1993, she had not legally changed her name from Hillary Rodham.[110] Bill Clinton's advisers thought her use of her maiden name to be one of the reasons for his 1980 gubernatorial re-election loss. During the following winter, Vernon Jordan suggested to Hillary Rodham that she start using the name Clinton, and she began to do so publicly with her husband's February 1982 campaign announcement to regain that office. She later wrote that "I learned the hard way that some voters in Arkansas were seriously offended by the fact that I kept my maiden name".[111] Once he was elected again, she made a point of using "Hillary Rodham Clinton" in work she did as first lady of the state.[83] Once she became First Lady of the United States in 1993, she publicly stated that she wanted to be known as "Hillary Rodham Clinton".[110] She has authored all of her books under that name. She continued to use that name on her website and elsewhere once she was a U.S. senator.[112] When she ran for president during 2007–08, she used the name "Hillary Clinton" or just "Hillary" in campaign materials.[112] She used "Hillary Rodham Clinton" again in official materials as Secretary of State.[113] As of the 2015 launch of her second presidential campaign, she again switched to using "Hillary Clinton" in campaign materials;[113] in November 2015 both the Associated Press and The New York Times noted that they would no longer use "Rodham" in referring to Clinton, with the Times stating that "the Clinton campaign confirmed ... that Mrs. Clinton prefers to be simply, 'Hillary Clinton'".[114]

^Clinton said in the joint 60 Minutes interview, "I'm not sitting here as some little woman 'standing by my man' like Tammy Wynette. I'm sitting here because I love him and I respect him, and I honor what he's been through and what we've been through together." The seemingly sneering reference to country music provoked immediate criticism that Clinton was culturally tone-deaf, and Tammy Wynette herself did not like the remark because "Stand by Your Man" is not written in the first person.[140] Wynette added that Clinton had "offended every true country music fan and every person who has 'made it on their own' with no one to take them to a White House."[141] A few days later, on Primetime Live, Hillary Clinton apologized to Wynette. Clinton would later write that she had been careless in her choice of words and that "the fallout from my reference to Tammy Wynette was instant — as it deserved to be — and brutal."[142] The two women later resolved their differences, with Wynette appearing at a Clinton fund raiser.

^Less than two months after the Tammy Wynette remarks, Clinton was facing questions about whether she could have avoided possible conflicts of interest between her governor husband and work given to the Rose Law Firm, when she remarked, "I've done the best I can to lead my life ... You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life."[143] The "cookies and teas" part of this statement prompted even more culture-based criticism of Clinton's apparent distaste for women who had chosen to be homemakers; the remark became a recurring campaign liability.[144] Clinton subsequently offered up some cookie recipes as a way of making amends, and would later write of her chagrin: "Besides, I've done quite a lot of cookie baking in my life, and tea-pouring too!"[143]

^The Eleanor Roosevelt "discussions" were first reported in 1996 by Washington Post writer Bob Woodward; they had begun from the start of Hillary Clinton's time as first lady.[155] Following the Democrats' loss of congressional control in the 1994 elections, Clinton had engaged the services of Human Potential Movement proponent Jean Houston. Houston encouraged Clinton to pursue the Roosevelt connection, and while no psychic techniques were used with Clinton, critics and comics immediately suggested that Clinton was holding séances with Eleanor Roosevelt. The White House stated that this was merely a brainstorming exercise, and a private poll later indicated that most of the public believed these were indeed just imaginary conversations, with the remainder believing that communication with the dead was actually possible.[156] In her 2003 autobiography, Clinton titled an entire chapter "Conversations with Eleanor", and stated that holding "imaginary conversations [is] actually a useful mental exercise to help analyze problems, provided you choose the right person to visualize. Eleanor Roosevelt was ideal."[157]

^General Jack Keane, one of the architects of the surge, later related that he tried to convince Clinton of its merits at the time but that she felt it would not succeed and that U.S. casualties would be too high. Keane said that sometime during 2008 she told him, "You were right, this really did work".[256] In 2014, Secretary of Defense Gates related that after Clinton had left the Senate and become Secretary of State, she told President Obama that her opposition to the 2007 Iraq surge had been political, due to her facing a strong challenge from the anti-Iraq War Obama in the upcoming Democratic presidential primary. Gates also quotes Clinton as saying, "The Iraq surge worked."[271] Clinton responded that Gates had misinterpreted her remark regarding the reason for her opposition.[256]

^When asked for her reaction to an Obama remark about the possibility that his campaign represented false hope, Clinton responded: "I would point to the fact that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the President before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished."[293]

^"2008 Democratic Popular Vote". RealClearPolitics. Retrieved July 8, 2008. The popular vote count for a nomination process is unofficial, and meaningless in determining the nominee. It is difficult to come up with precise totals due to some caucus states not reporting popular vote totals and thus having to be estimated. It is further difficult to compare Clinton and Obama's totals, due to only her name having been on the ballot in the Michigan primary.[305]

^These efforts were not immediately rewarded, largely due to the unpopularity of drone attacks in Pakistan and other anti-terrorism U.S. actions. Polls in Pakistan and other Muslim countries showed approval of the U.S. declined among its citizens between 2009 and 2012 and confidence that Clinton was doing the right thing in world affairs was also low. The confidence ratings for Clinton were high in most European countries and generally mixed in the BRIC countries.[334]

^While generally experiencing good health in her life, Clinton had previously had a potentially serious blood clot in her knee while first lady in 1998, for which she had required anticoagulant treatment.[371] An elbow fracture and subsequent painful recuperation had caused Clinton to miss two foreign trips as Secretary of State in 2009.[372] The 2012 concussion and clot episode caused Clinton to postpone her congressional testimony on the Benghazi attack and also to miss any foreign trips planned for the rest of her tenure.[369] After returning to public activity, she wore special glasses for two months, with a Fresnel lens for the left eye to compensate for double vision, a lingering effect of the concussion.[370][373] She remained on anticoagulant medication as a precaution.[370]

^Clinton's 112 countries visited broke Madeleine Albright's previous mark of 96.[380] Clinton's sum of 956,733 air miles traveled, however, fell short of Condoleezza Rice's record for mileage.[379] That total, 1,059,207, was bolstered late in Rice's tenure by repeated trips to the Middle East.[381]

^ abDuring Clinton's tenure there were several cases where foreign governments continued making donations to the Clinton Foundation at the same level they had before Clinton became secretary, which was permissible under the agreement forged before she took office, and also one instance of a new donation, $500,000 from Algeria for earthquake relief in Haiti, that was outside the bounds of the continuation provision and should have received a special State Department ethics review but did not.[419] The foundation's new stance as of April 2015 and Clinton's presidential candidacy was to accept foreign governmental donations only from Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.[420]

^Clinton's story was thoroughly investigated by Fact Checker Michelle Ye Hee Lee in the Washington Post. Quote:"After receiving more information from the National Air and Space Museum, specifically a March 1962 letter with a similar tone and message as the Miss Kelly letterArchived October 22, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. and Clinton's account, we decided the claim met the "reasonable person" standard. We award Clinton the rare Geppetto Checkmark [Statements and claims that contain "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth"]."Full report: Lee, Michelle Ye Hee (November 30, 2015). "Hillary Clinton's often-told story that NASA rejected her childhood dream of becoming an astronaut". The Washington Post.Neither Clinton nor NASA has produced a copy of the actual response that she states she had received.

^Troy 2006, p. 15; Gerth and Van Natta 2007, pp. 18–21; Bernstein 2007, pp. 34–36. The teacher, Paul Carlson, and the minister, Donald Jones, came into conflict in Park Ridge; Clinton would later see that as "an early indication of the cultural, political and religious fault lines that developed across America in the [next] forty years" (Clinton 2003, p. 23). Several dates have been published for the King speech she witnessed, but for April 15, 1962, as the most likely, see Dobbs, Michael (December 31, 2007). "Hillary and Martin Luther King Jr". The Washington Post.

^"The Class of '69". Life. June 20, 1969. pp. 28–33. Archived from the original on December 25, 2014. The article features Rodham and two student commencement speakers from other schools, with photos and excerpts from their speeches

^Morris 1996, p. 139; Bernstein 2007, p. 105. Clinton would later write, and repeat on the Late Show with David Letterman, that sliming fish was the best preparation she would ever have for living in Washington. Clinton 2003, pp. 42–43

^Bernstein 2007, p. 92; Allen and Parnes 2014, p. 149. Taking an out-of-date bar study class may have been a factor. Two-thirds (551 of 817) of the candidates passed, and Rodham did not tell even close friends of the failure until revealing it thirty years later in her autobiography

^"Hillary Rodham Clinton". PBS. Archived from the original on December 28, 2014. Retrieved December 2, 2014. Clinton had the first postgraduate degree through regular study and scholarly work. Eleanor Roosevelt had been previously awarded a postgraduate honorary degree. Clinton's successor Laura Bush became the second first lady with a postgraduate degree

^"Voting Records". Americans for Democratic Action. Retrieved March 21, 2009. Average consists of a 95 in 2001 through 2004 and 2006, a 100 in 2005, a 75 in 2007, and a 70 in 2008 (the decline in the final two years was due to missed votes while campaigning for president)

^CBS News: "Hillary Calls For End To Electoral College"Archived December 10, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. November 10, 2000 |"We are a very different country than we were 200 years ago", Clinton said. "I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me, that means it's time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president." "I hope no one is ever in doubt again about whether their vote counts."